Colson Whitehead’s new memoir, “The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky and Death,” began as an assignment for the online magazine Grantland, which commissioned him to compete in and write about the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. In the book, Mr. Whitehead writes about his anhedonic personality (“I have a good poker face because I am half dead inside,” it begins), his training with the help of a coach named Helen Ellis and his fate at the high-stakes tables. I recently spoke to Mr. Whitehead in a phone interview. Below are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Q.

When did you first start playing poker?

A.

Late college. My roommates and I senior year spent every night after dinner drinking a case of beer and playing bridge and poker. I preferred bridge, and it wasn’t until I started playing a weekly poker game in my mid-20s that I started to see the possible complexities. One relief of getting kicked out of the World Series was not having to remember all that stuff. My powers of concentration are not what they once were.

Q.

Was there something about the game that appealed to you as a writer from the start? Do you think you would have written about it eventually if Grantland hadn’t asked?

A.

I think no. It was very daunting. Chronicling my incompetence and attempts to understand the game was the only way I could do it. Without an assignment, it wouldn’t have occurred to me that that was possible. A novel with a poker player protagonist would actually require me to understand the game more than I’m capable of.

Q.

Did the style of the original pieces and the feeling you had writing them carry over to the book?

A.

Writing the original articles, I was in a more depressive state than when I expanded them. One of the odd things about expanding it into a book-length piece was impersonating who I was a year and a half before. I wanted to keep what I call the performative despair that I was employing in the original articles.

When I was doing criticism in a very colloquial way in The Village Voice in the early ’90s, I had a fun time discovering who I was as a writer. The voice I use in most of my novels is far from how I think and feel, obviously. So to have a persona that’s very close to how I see things, as opposed to imposing certain rules of fiction and storytelling upon it, was fun.

Q.

Did it make you want to write more in that voice?

A.

I had planned a novel in the first person after writing this, but it was too close to that voice. So in my usual annoying way, I decided to do something else.

Q.

Why did you get a poker coach?

A.

I was buying the wrong books. All the stuff I was studying wasn’t really appropriate to tournament poker.

Q.

Was there a psychological benefit to having a coach?

A.

I could always text her and email her, but once I was actually at the World Series and dwindling on Day 2 and trying to battle back, she was there on the other end of Twitter to give me advice. In a sort of boxing way, she was in my corner with the water bottle and words of encouragement.

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Q.

Did you feel pressure to play well enough to get a good narrative out of it?

A.

There was [pressure], not so much in terms of the story, but just in terms of not embarrassing myself, and not embarrassing Helen and the friends in my home game. I wanted to just survive as long as I could.

Q.

How familiar were you with other poker memoirs before writing this book?

A.

“The Biggest Game in Town” [by Al Alvarez] and “Positively Fifth Street” [by James McManus] I had read before I went there, finding literary antecedents for what I was doing. The books are different form each other and from what I was trying to do. I see the writer in the midst of this colorful culture, taking notes, wanting to participate. I felt a kinship with Alvarez and McManus as fellow writers navigating this experience.

Q.

Do you still play regularly or did this get it out of your system for a while?

A.

My attitude toward the game has changed. I find casual games, which I used to enjoy – I was always the explainer – much more exasperating. But I’m also not going to start going to casinos, to Mohegan Sun or to Atlantic City. I’m cheap, and I don’t have a lot of time.